Blink
Book Review by Adam Chan

Why do we sometimes make decisions in a matter of seconds? Not only these decisions were made in lightning speed, we can almost feel or expect the decisions made were all but the wrong ones.

As we grew and learned, there are certain things to us became second nature, the way we treat these things need no pondering or hesitation. We simply know what is right and wrong about it instantaneously and spontaneously.

Could it be the familiar hunch is at work again? Have I felt like this before? This may set us thinking if hunches are reliable. We are schooled to make calculated decisions, weighing the pros and cons prior to diving into actions. Rational drives us to take into consideration of multiple factors before deciding. As we accumulate greater ranges of knowledge, we might be more prudent when making choices. Is this all together a merit? Can we appreciate the merits of quick decisions as like those carefully considered judgments that same way?

There is no doubt that we sometimes make decisions with minimum thinking and it turns out to be the correct one as opposed to a decision that was made through a tedious weighing process.

The book “blink” is about this phenomenon; making decisions in a blink of an eye; both correct snap judgment and wrong autistic judgment. Snap judgments that benefit and autistic judgments that kill. Both judgments regardless of the outcome are made within a blink of an eye, hence the title of the book.

Also the author for Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell has again cleverly put together a collection of real life stories, interviewing experts, studying existing researches that have in one way or the other connected to what Gladwell is trying to tell the readers. Indeed, blink is delightfully counterintuitive and enriching. This is about The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

Theory of Thin Slicing

Our internal computer and how it works (pg 12).

Our brain works best by relegating a great deal high level information to our unconscious. The internal computer a.k.a. the brain is capable of processing huge amount of data quickly and quietly. The products of such process are decisions made in very short time, often too short for anyone to believe that it is real and useful.
This rapid decision leap is a form of study known as adaptive unconscious. This mechanism sizes up the world, warn us of imminent dangers, initiating actions of a sophisticated and efficient manner, etc. It could very well be the mechanism that keeps humans alive until today. As like the 80/20 rule, the most effective means are not mammoth efforts but tiny pushes that make the critical difference. They usually lies subtly beneath and they most hard to detect, or believe?

The Love Lab (pg 21).

How subtle communications that are oblivious to most others but carry significant meaning to what may hold in the future; John Gottman, a psychologist by training and teaches mathematics in MIT, also the author of the Mathematics of Divorce suggested that divorce occurrences can be determined by mathematics.

How can we ever quantify marriage? Let alone what is the number for divorce. Since 1980s, Gottman has studied more than 3000 couples in this love lab. Couples under studied are invited to sit on two office chairs placed 5 feet apart, both had electrodes and sensor clipped to their fingers and ears, which measured things like heart rate, how much they were sweating, and the temperature of their skin. Under their chairs, a jiggle-o-meter is used to measure how much each one moves around. Two cameras, aim at each person will record everything they say and do.

For fifteen minutes, they were left alone with instructions to get them in discussions regarding their marriage life until the point of contention. What can we extract from a fifteen minute video? Not a lot compared to the length of most marriages, isn’t it? However to Gottman, fifteen minutes is all he needs. He has cleverly devised a coding system with twenty categories corresponding to every conceivable emotions a married couple can express, which he called SPAFF a.k.a. for specific affect. For example disgust is 1, contempt is 2, anger is 7, defensiveness is 10, whining is 11, sadness is 12, and so on. Gottman has trained his lab assistants to recognize emotion nuances in people’s facial expressions and how to interpret seemingly ambiguous bits of dialogue.

From the fifteen minutes of observations, all data is translated in a row of 800 to 900 numbers that look like this; 7,7,14,10,11,11, and so on. Feeding all the collected numbers into a complex equation, Gottman is able to predict up to 90% accuracy whether the studied couple will still be a couple after 15 years. The longer the observation, the accuracy increases.

Sometimes over dinner, Gottman could predict any couples’ life span by just eavesdropping into their conversation. Gottman relies all but instinct. He has painstakingly study those video tapes for years and the observations were totally conscious and deliberate. What Gottman has demonstrated is a form of rapid cognition known as thin slicing. He has achieved such personal mastery in recognizing interaction patterns in couples’ relationship that it looks like instinct to any laymen. The fact is thin slicing occurs in our unconscious mind which is automatic and rapid. So what is fast and inconceivable to us is now slow and logical to Gottman. This is the power of thin slicing.

Marriage and Morse Code (Pg 24).

A stunning discovery made by Gottman during the fifteen minutes discussion is the ratio of positive to negative emotions. This is Gottman’s magic number for the survival of a marriage. Amber Tabares, Gottman’s lab assistant is trained by Gottman to detect the slightest emotional signals resulted in their interactions. Essentially she is measuring the amount of positive and negative emotions.

According to Gottman, for marriages to survive, the ratio should be at least 5 to 1 with positive to negative respectively. His central argument to marriage survival is the existence of a distinctive pattern, a kind of marital DNA that would surface during any meaningful interactions.

This distinctive pattern is analogous to Morse code. Such code is made up of dots and dashes of prescribed spacing and length. The fact is nobody ever replicates those spacing and length perfectly which offers the interceptors the most valuable clues to tracking the Morse codes operators. Likewise, Gottman said that such distinctive patterns arise naturally and automatically in relationships that make it possible to read and decode. Regardless something as simple as detecting Morse code patterns or as complex as marriages, there exist an identifiable stable pattern. Therefore predicting divorce, like tracking Morse code operators, is pattern recognition.

The Importance of Contempt (Pg 32).

To a layman, it is almost impossible to identify the emotions while watching the couples simultaneously with useable accuracy. The SPAFF chart has twenty emotions; even trained personnel will find it challenging to keep up with the changes in emotions during the couple’s interactions. Gottman revealed his secret behind thin slicing, i.e. he is far more selective than all others who have done it.

His focus is on four emotions, defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism and contempt he calls the “Four Horsemen” which he had discovered after thousand hours of watching couples’ interactions. The four emotions have significant influences on the any marriages’ survival especially for contempt. Contempt is related to disgust, talking from a higher plane to a lower one on someone, subtly but assuredly it communicates rejection and exclusion, extremely damaging to any relationships. Gottman has emphasized that if contempt can be measured, you don’t need to know all other details of the couples’ relationship. Adopting this selective process, Gottman is able to thin slice on-the-fly, leaving all other information to be handled by his subconscious, also this how our brain naturally functions.

Listening to Doctors (Pg 41).

Insurance companies that sell medical malpractice protection for doctors are concern with what kind of doctors are likely to be sued. Raking in revenues depends on the number of malpractice lawsuits; the lesser the better. How can we predict this? The most logical course of actions will be tracking the doctors past records, the number reported mistakes, compensation meted to patients, complain to compliment ratio, etc. Would you simply reply on snippets of the doctors’ conversations with patients? It doesn’t look likely for the second option to work.

The fact is malpractice lawsuits have little to do with how skillful the doctors are, not even how few mistakes they made. Surprisingly, there many cases of doctors making mistakes, even causing injuries to patients that never get sued for malpractices. The truth is patients don’t file lawsuits simply because of shoddy medical care. Instead doctors get sued due to shoddy medical care and something else. What might be the something? It is the way doctors treat the patients that matter more than just the competency.

Alice Burkin, a leading medical malpractice lawyer has never once come across a lawsuit that is purely because of shoddy medical care. Most clients sue because the lack in personal treatment, no care and concern exhibited during the consultation or they were not treated as humans. Clients often use highly emotional words when describing their experiences with the doctors.

It all boils down to respect, doctors who tone of voice are less domineering have higher chances of being sued whereas those who are less. This demonstrated how patients decide to sue or not. Obviously they are not aware of what thin slicing is but they have definitely made their decisions based on implicit factors without consciously thinking about it. Yet another example of making snap judgments.

After thoughts

From Gottman to the patients, it is hard to visualize in what way they are common. Could it be their ability to thin slice? Finding another person like Gottman is rare but what about the patients? Gottman has unknowingly trained himself to thin slice. Surely the patients did not have compelling reasons to get good at thin slicing, isn’t it? Perhaps the ability to thin slice is not an exotic gift and also not restricted to the privileged, in reality, we thin slice because we have to. Unless our brain can handle massive amount of information which, in reality we can’t, there are no merits to analyze that much. Therefore, subconsciously and automatically we select information that will make sense to the situations and eventually making snap judgments. Not only we are able to thin slice, indeed we are old hands of this ability. This ability is elusive yet uncannily familiar.